Atlantic League President Rick White Speaks On New Extra Inning Rule

Yes, when the Atlantic League announced on Tuesday that they were going to use a polarizing extra inning rule for the first time in 2019 -- starting with the tenth inning, the runner who made the last out in the previous frame will start the new inning standing on second base, a rule that will be used in the regular season and any potential tie-breaking game to decide a division title -- the majority of fans were rather displeased.

But, the Board of Directors and league president Rick White decided that an interest in attempting to make the transition for players looking to return to affiliated baseball easier would take precedent over any fear of the initial backlash that would come with adopting the pace of play initiative that Minor League Baseball put into place at all levels last year.

"There wasn't any compelling reason (to do it) other than we thought it was consistent with our existing pace of play initiative, and that was what stimulated the conversation," White told MyCentralJersey.com

"I did an analysis recently of annual player movement from our league to MLB organizations, and we are now sending -- not just in-season, but throughout the year -- somewhere between 60 and 80 players back...we want these guys to deal with consistent rules wherever they go or wherever their assignments are."

With MiLB having already done this, and other independent leagues having done this in different ways -- the Can-Am League pioneered this several years ago, but began the process with the 11th inning -- there was plenty of data to draw from on just how it would affect the baseball itself.

"We saw last year a difference in emerging strategy around this rule," White said. "When it was first adopted in the affiliated leagues, they did what you were seeing in the American Association, Can-Am League and Frontier League, which was you try to bunt the guy over to third, hit a sacrifice fly and have him score. What happened last year, though, was around the middle of the year the major-league clubs said that wasn't necessarily the most productive use of outs and at-bats, and they started swinging away. We were intrigued by that."

So, that's the on-field element. But let's not pretend the off-field element isn't in play here either, which White didn't shy away from in acknowledging "scores of issues in resource allotment" that come from games going past the scheduled nine innings.

"You preserve arms, but you preserve equipment, specifically baseballs," he said. "But there's nobody in the ballpark and concession stands aren't open (deep in extra innings) and you're just prolonging a game that needs resolution. When it comes from everything from washing uniforms to getaway (days), there are just inherent advantages that we had never really examined before. In '16, '17 and '18, respectively, we had 38, 47 and 41 extra-inning contests. The majority of those were resolved in the tenth or eleventh inning, but we had some that went all the way to 16 innings."

Back to the on-field though, shall we? Statistics get affected here, and in a significant way. While the runner who will start each extra inning on second base will, for scoring purposes, have reached on an error (one that will not be charged anywhere) and thus be an unearned run, wins and losses for pitchers come into play here.

Talk of implementing the extra inning rule had been ongoing for a while, and a suggestion had been made to White that perhaps he could implement something similar to the way hockey lays out their standings with a win, loss and for the purposes of this example, extra innings loss so that a pitcher's W-L record would more accurate depict what really happened.

However, with stat pages like Baseball-Reference and the league's own partner, Pointstreak, unable to handle something like that, it wasn't an option.

"Pitchers will receive either a win or loss in conventional scoring, and I think the common wisdom there is that pitchers are going to get a win or a loss anyway," White said. "In our case, because I'm going to be the guy who is going to hear about pitchers who are angry about getting the loss and they'll say it's artificial, what's interesting is...I think they know it in their hearts, and I know managers know it, scouts aren't necessarily looking at won-loss records when they're signing our players. They're looking at velo, placement and a lot of other stuff before they even look at an ERA. We didn't think that was going to be to anyone's detriment. You're either going to win a game or lose a game in extra innings, and that isn't going to change."

Manager reaction ranged from "I don't really like it" to "I'm fine with it" according to White, who noted that some skippers were eager to follow affiliated ball for consistency purposes like he referred to earlier while others took a more traditional approach to the game. But White says the consensus was that this was something they should have done a long time ago.

My thoughts on it all? I can see both sides of it. If White's numbers are accurate -- and I sure as hell am not double-checking three years worth of box scores for that -- that's 126 extra-inning games over the past three seasons, in which around 1,600 total games would have been played; so this would affect around eight percent of games.

Do I want to see changes made to baseball? No. Why fix what seems to be working?

Do I want to be at a game until midnight in a dead ballpark when just about everyone's long since gone home watching the seventh reliever of the game trying to avoid serving up a meatball for the fourth inning in a row? Not really, no.

My only "significant" issue with the rule would be going straight to it in the tenth and not have one, "legitimate," full extra frame and then go to the eleventh if necessary. Thankfully, the rule doesn't apply to the postseason, so those classic contests can still be played as they should be.

As for the strategy element of it...bunting the runner over with a man on second late in a tie game is still a wee bit of a sensitive issue for those who follow Somerset closely. But, do I think we'll see anything but that? No.

What do you guys think? Let me know on Twitter at @mashmore98 or send me an e-mail at mashmore98 AT gmail.com